The Vanishing Part 2: The NSA's Utah Data Center Goes Off-Grid Again

18 Jun 2014 by Mike Allen

"The NSA's central nervous system will remain dark for the time being. Our National Spy (er, Security) Agency after many months of pleading with Bluffdale, UT to help keep the NSA's Utah datacenter off-grid, may just get exactly what they wish - which shouldn't be too surprising to any of us.Night Falls Fast on the NSA's ""Dark Data Center"" What exactly does the NSA have to hide? Well, that's part of the problem, no one really knows, and actions like these, pressuring local government officials to keep the datacenter ""hidden"" makes the rest of us a bit more suspicious of the inner-workers of the Utah data center.

Of course there are several reasons why the NSA is suspect of the public:

1) 5.9 million people tuned in to watch Brian William's interview of Edward Snowden

2) The public keeps trying to get a hold of their own personable data - something that you can do, but you have to do it in writing

3) Since the Snowden leak the public is rightfully getting a bit tired of not knowing just how much the NSA knows about us

So in a brilliant PR move, the NSA has rendered the datacenter ""dark"" and off-grid for the time being, officials call it an act of national security, but this move to keep it dark just makes it all the more suspicious.

This all came to light back in May, with Salt Lake City Tribune reporter Mike Carlisle decided to find out one simple fact about the datacenter: how much water was it using?

Carlisle hoped to gain a little bit of insight into what's going on inside the building and what efforts are needed for the NSA to facilitate its massive surveillance tasks.

Yet time and time again the NSA denied the simple request, even when Carlisle simple wanted to ""determine the computing power and capacities of the Utah Data Center."" Apparently, this raise a huge threat to national security.The Location of the NSA's Data Center Enough so that the NSA continued to fight Carlisle until the reporter appealed to Utah's States Records Committee - and he actually won. He found out that the NSA is actually using a lot less water than its allotted 1.7 million gallons per day. This statistic, of course, brought to you by the NSA.

However, Carlisle's victory was short, last week, the Bluffdale Town Council voted to act as its own records panel, effectively removing the state from the decision-making process when it comes to disclosing the NSA's water bill.

Bluffdale's Mayor Derk Timothy insisted that the NSA has had nothing to do with its decision to change the way it deals with public records, and asserted that ""Many cities have done this."" The NSA was unavailable for comment.

For more information on the data center click here or visit datacenters,com for all things tech and datacenter related."

Author

Mike Allen

"The NSA's central nervous system will remain dark for the time being. Our National Spy (er, Security) Agency after many months of pleading with Bluffdale, UT to help keep the NSA's Utah datacenter off-grid, may just get exactly what they wish - which shouldn't be too surprising to any of ...